Differences

So I posted earlier about how walking on the street in Spain is different than walking on the street in America. Which led me to dig out another post I'd been working on since I got to Spain, which is a list of the differences I've noticed while I was there. Some of them are interesting, some of them aren't, but I feel like it merits posting because it describes some of the daily life that I forget to mention in my normal posts.

• You always wear socks & shoes in the house. Always. You want to go to the bathroom across the hall? You wear your flip-flops.
  
• There is graffiti everywhere and it doesn't seem to be a very big deal. It's on the garage doors over closed shops, abandoned buildings, walls of the city… everything. Some of it is artsy, a lot of it is scribbled words, kind of like the USA.
  
• As a foreigner, you get to walk that tricky line between taking large amounts of money out of the ATM to avoid too many fees and then being hated by cashiers for handing them 50 euro bills when your coffee & pastry comes to a grand total of 3.20.
  
• ALWAYS turn off the lights, because electricity is so expensive here. The government controls it, and they keep raising the tax on it. María likes to talk about this. A lot.
  
• People don't go over to one another's houses very often. Houses are for family and close friends. I wouldn't even ask María if a friend could come over to the house to study or watch a movie. Everybody does those things in town. I once had a conversation with my host brother about the kind of house parties that happen in the USA, and he can barely wrap his head around the idea.
  
• They don't use dryers. Which is probably really good for my clothes… it's just annoying when it rains for two weeks so when you pack for Morocco, half your clothes are wet and you have no idea how to pack.
  
• People don't sit at cafés by themselves. If I'm wandering around town on my own, I usually get coffee to go and find a library or some other location to sit at in lieu of taking up a whole table to myself.
  
• People are much better at conversations here. There's a lot fewer awkward pauses when everyone just decides to get on their phones because the topic ran out. That's something I'm going to miss. Plus they all talk over each other, so following a conversation is like trying to watch a crazy ping-pong match, I'm surprised I haven't gotten whiplash yet.
  
• Lunch is the main meal of the day. You know how in America (at least in my world) kids tend to eat lunch with their friends or out of the house, but for dinner you go home and eat with your family? In Spain, you go home and eat lunch with your family, it's the biggest meal of the day. Dinners are much, much lighter (María just eats fruit or something little), and if you're going to eat out with friends, it's usually at dinner.
  
• They have ham-flavored potato chips.
  
• They also have paprika-flavored Pringles.
  
• Pharmacies here are like going to the medicine aisle of Target. If you're sick, you go in, you tell them your problem, they give you something to fix it. Even if you just need something like Nyquil or Ibuprofen, you still go talk to the pharmacist.
  
• Dinner isn't until 8 PM at least, which means kids don't leave to go out with their friends until around 10, depending on the age. I meet my friends in the Plaza around 11 most nights.
  
• It hasn't snowed here. And some of the trees still have leaves. It's rained like nobody's business (although I've been told repeatedly this is not normal…), but I've seen no snow.
  
• Gyms are expensive. So I haven't been to one for months, given that when I asked about a pass for the month, I was told it would be 75 euro–50 for the gym + pool, and a 25 euro joining fee. It's nonsense. I tried to do push-ups and stuff like that, but there's so little space in the apartment. I really can't wait to go back to the gym at home, even if it will be overrun with people who just made the New Year's Resolution to work out more.
  
• The food… is just not same. Don't get me wrong, I love María's cooking. And they do breakfasts right, especially at the hotels we've been staying at on our excursions. I don't know exactly how to describe the difference, because the only words that come to mind are "bland" and "heavy", and those ones sound so negative to me. They just use a lot fewer seasonings, and a lot more olive oil. And especially coming from Colorado where people are stereotypically in love with salads and anything fresh-tasting, and believe fats and anything fried is food of Satan, food with this much oil just makes me feel heavy.
  
• If you go out to eat, there is rarely a host to great you. Depending on the caliber of the restaurant, you either just seat yourself or a waiter will snag you between waiting tables to tell you where to have a seat.
  
• People are much more direct. This is something I was personally prepared for from everything I'd learned about Spanish culture and from having a native Spanish professor, but my family was not. It came to light one night at dinner, when my English-speaking family was under the impression the waiter was annoyed with us, when to me he seemed just a little rushed because he had a lot of tables to get to.